KERI HILSON

New Body

New Music

NO NONSENSE

Again the font is red to shown the feminine approach to the female audience. The name Keri Hilson and NO NONSENSE have been put in upper case to show dominance and power over the reader, and to show that this is the new me and I am not ashamed exploit it and if there is a problem get over it. I also used this catchy masthead to appeal, attract and address my target audience straightaway.

The shot on my music magazine cover, follows the conventions of an R&B music magazine cover, because the girl is brown and R&B artists are brown, black or mixed race. 

My music magazine is my own invention created to follow the conventions and develop or challenge forms of the R&B music magazine VIBE.  My music magazine does follow the conventions of VIBE, through the Banner P.I.M.P, which gives a more feminist representation of the R&B culture, where VIBE gives a more masculine approach. The Banner VIBE is shown normally in white or black fonts with male artists, and red fonts with female artists. My front cover has obeyed with the same tradition by changing the font colour to pink in upper case and bold to obviously state that my music magazine is for a female target audience I had taken inspiration from the VIBE music magazine fonts and catchy mastheads. 

My masthead had represented black female artists as they are in today’s society as very seductive, persuasive and almost business type. For example, the edition of VIBE with the picture of the R&B artist Ciara, gives a true and perfect vision of how R&B women are used as sex objects, and have a way of making themselves look innocent to the audience but yet demanding. The first half of the masthead encouraged me to design a music magazine on an R&B female artist’s body and the new transformation of it. I have also used this masthead to create a similar message to my target audience.  

P.I.M.P

Mock up's of Front cover: 1st mock up and final mock up.
Mock up of Contents page
Mock up of Double page spread

Most R&B music videos and the paparazzi taking photo shots are mainly done in night clubs, alley ways and late night parties. These are all common places to portray R&B, relating back to the lyrics of their songs being about in today’s society, the younger generation tend to now live life with late night partying and wanting to have the freedom to enjoy themselves. This already has given me ideas that my images should be set in these late night, urban settings, giving it a more ‘gangster’ look.

Costume Ideas

In this image, Beyonce Knowles is shown in an outfit, which represents the sexual and seductive side to R&B music. The length of the dress, shows how she has nothing to hide, and is not ashamed at her figure. The fact that it has a slit on our left hand side, once again, shows how she is lady to be watched and admired. Also the dress is grey, which gives her more female dominance and higher authority power. The sequences on the dress, gives it a more lady like and classy look. There is an element of sophistication on the top half of the dress. Even though some people may vision the dress as very revealing, to people who like listening to Beyonce’s music, they feel inspired by her and treat her as a role model. The hoop earrings, give a more feminine look. The heavy bling such as the earrings, create impact, of the serious, careless and layed back attitude which is in R&B culture.

In this image, we see Rihanna in three different outfits, which give us a different perspective of how we view an R&B artist. The first outfit, she is wearing is a knee-length frilly strapped blue dress. This creates a girly like image, of something you would where to a party or dance. The fact that it is frilly and electric blue gives her attitude and power to seduce a male audience. The high heeled silver sandals, again gives her a sense of lady-like sophistication and womanly personality for an R&B singer. The second dress is a brown/greyish colour with a black belt. We can see that female R&B artists can be unpredictable sometimes in what outfit they chose to wear. In this picture, Rihanna is wearing a dress that is quite in your face, and with attitude. Also the black boots gives a sense that she is proud of what she wears and that she has nothing to be ashamed of, reflecting on her smile, and facial expression.

In the third picture, we see a very elegant and graceful side, to what we expect R&B artists to wear. Her long patterned dress, again gives her sense of lady-like sophistication and balance as the dress is not over the top. We can also see a peaceful and beautiful side, to the singer, from the elegance of the dress. 

The use of heavy ‘bling’ shows exactly what R&B music is all about. The shiny silver and gold colour creates a sense of what their personality and attitude is about, that it is very Pimp like. The in depth crystals that are embedded within it, shows how expensive this jewellery would have been, which would reflect on R&B artists wealth. The shiny element of the jewellery, gives R&B artists their image and stage name that they are about a group of cultured entertainers, living by their image to look like someone with edge, a careless and shameless attitude, to look very wealthy, and to always look dominant. If a woman was to wear these items, it would make her look attractive, female dominant, a role model to the younger generation, someone to be admired and inspired by. 

The Codes and Conventions of the R&B music genre

• The poses and gestures the artists make are normally seductive, sexual and dominant.
  
• R&B artists have a very moody and serious attitude, pose and gesture.
•  The clothing that they wear are very baggy, short, sexually revealing and low trouser trend.
• Their songs are mainly sung by black artists, going back to what R&B means (Rhythm and Blues) which originates from the black culture.
• The locations of their music videos and images, take place in urban settings, nightclubs and late night parties etc.
• The costumes that the artists wear (low jeans, short clothes such as skirts and shorts, and the jewellery) reflect on their personality, of a careless and shameless attitude. 
  
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  Male R&B artists normally wear hats, and have cigars or little cocktail sticks in their mouths.
  
  
• The body language and posture that is made by R&B artists can also be interpreted as the audience is being spoken and directed to.
• R&B music songs mainly have the issues and topics of racism, sexism, sex, drugs, violence, bullying, knife crime, in order to give a moral message to its fans.

 Questionnaire

Here, I have conducted a bar chart looking at what the responses from my target audience, about what type of topics they would like to read about in a music magazine. They could tick more than one. So overall, as we can see more people wanted to see celebrities’ personal lives more in a music magazine, next to Health and Beauty. This reflects my magazine being for a female target audience, which they are more likely want read about topics that are going to be influential and beneficial for them, rather than for instance wanting to see what concert/gigs are going to be coming out. So we can gather from this data that the female population are not particularly interested in concerts, but in products and gossip that they can use in everyday life.

This next graph I have conducted a bar chart looking at what people favourite types of music are. They could tick more than one box. So from looking at this data Pop came out with a higher score than R&B. This could be due to the fact that they may have ticked Pop along with the other options. R&B came out second.  Furthermore, my selection of people that I had, had to complete the questionnaires, was obviously a very weak sample if they picked Pop, even though my music genre is R&B.

In this graph, I had conducted a bar chart looking at what my target audience find more eye-catching on music magazine front cover. The main image, came out with the highest votes, next to the cover mount and thirdly to the Header. In addition this shows that my target audience are very visual and are attracted to something big and dominant, which will grab their attention. The fact that no one picked little images or stated anything else, indicates also that my target audience are not boring ad want something that will appeal to them.

Taking a look at the other questions, which were asking them to give their emotions and feelings, there were similar but yet a mixture of answers. From my questionnaire, no one attends gigs or concerts, which relates back to the graph of topics to see in a music magazine which also got zero. Again this relates back to females answering the questionnaire. Everyone had said they were a big fan of music, picking ‘VIBE’ and ‘Top of the Pops’, music magazine, which once again reflects on the choice of music that they listen to.

Over three quarters of the people who filled in the questionnaires, agreed to pay between £1.20-£2.50 for a music magazine, which is a sensible amount of money to pay, also that is how much you are expected to pay for a music magazine today.

Finally the last question was asking to give a brief description of why they listen to music? Majority of the people had said that they listen to music, for leisure, relaxation and they generally like the beat or words to the songs. Another person had said that music helps them to reflect on life and most R&B songs help them do that, with the morals and teachings that they teach on teenage life, and it also portrays teenagers and what they can be committing or victims of, in a society of change, discrimination and prejudice.